Between the two years I spent at Stanford getting an MS in Electronic Engineering, I worked a summer at Lawrence Livermore. Similar to my experience at Picatinny Arsenal, I wasn't given much of anything to do so my work experience wa totally boring. Sure I got a paycheck and this helped with college expenses, but I learned nothing and I contributed nothing. I was left to my own devices. I rode my motorcycle to work every day from an apartment I shared in Hayward. In my spare time I started taking flying lessons at Livermore Airport. To my knowledge I wasn't part of any project at Lawrence Livermore. The funding was there to pay me, and besides that no one seemed to be interested to make use of my skill set or my work ethic. Still I had to be there during normal working hours and look busy. I think this was just a recruiting tool as they did seem to be interested in hiring Stanford graduates. Of course, when I did graduate the next year, I wasn't interested in going to work at such a drab, dull boring place as Lawrence Livermore.
My guess is that there was a core of qualified scientists and engineers who did "real" work while everyone else was just padding. Department heads were under pressure to bring in the money from the Pentagon and Congress and to justify their continued existence. So they had to invent "programs" and sell somebody in a position in Washington to dole out money that their program should be funded. Certain channels were established and certain doler outers in the Pentagon and Congress could be counted upon to keep the good ole Radiation Lab going and even growing. Since it was civil service the cost plus contract didn't come into play, but competition for funding to keep an expanding number of engineers on the payroll continued on a daily basis. Department heads were essentially salesmen whose job was to sell the Washingtonians on projects which essentially went nowhere and were no coherent part of any overall defense strategy. These projects and departments had a life of their own, and their funding had the purpose mainly of keeping middle class engineers in their jobs and on the payroll until they could comfortably retire. The more successful department heads were in bringing home the bacon, the higher they advanced on the civil service ladder and pay scale.
I can't say my experience at Lawrence Livermore was memorable. I don't remember any fellow employees, supervisors or anyone at that facility. I don't remember any project or work content of anything I was supposed to be a part of or any work assignments whatsoever. It was just a boring summer job to be gotten through until I could start my second year at Stanford and finish my Master's Degree. After I had almost graduated, I started applying for regular jobs as I didn't want to continue to get a PhD at Stanford. Actually, I hadn't done very well on the oral exams which wasn't encouraging, but after I had made up my mind to leave, my research advisor, John Shaw, actually wanted me to stay. At Stanford I had to work 23 hours a week in the Microwave Lab to fulfill the requirements of my research assistantship which paid for my tuition and room and board. So I interviewed IBM and some other companies. IBM had me take some tests in San Francisco, and I must have done well on them because they were hot for my bod. I had already decided I didn't want to go to work for IBM because I had read that they ordered every aspect of your life telling you what books to read and what clubs to join etc. That wasn't for me.
I decided to take a job offer in San Diego with General Dynamics in the Electromagnetic Compatibility Group. I was attracted to San Diego because it seemed to be the opposite of everything I grew up with in New Jersey. It was California Dreaming - sun, beaches, girls. I put little thought into the fact that General Dynamics was a major defense contractor. My political awareness hadn't reached a very high level at that point, and I was led to believe that GD was in the business of space exploration. After all they had the Atlas rocket and the Convair spacecraft. It seemed like an interesting job where I could do some interesting work, and in my particular case it did work out that way. I had some interesting researchy projects to work on. I got along well with the other employees in my little group, and I liked my supervisor, Ben Weinbaum. Little did I know at the time of all the shenanigans involved in all the behind the scenes machinations of General Dynamics as a major player in the military industrial complex. There was plenty of make work, plenty of boondoggles, plenty of cost plus funding for projects that went nowhere and replicated projects elsewhere that did have some relevance.
Again I observed the phenomenon that certain groups seemed to hire more employees than other groups even though the technology they embodied didn't seem to merit their prominence. These groups and departments, it turned out, had the best salesmen as group heads and department heads. They spent most of their time in Washington selling Congress and the Pentagon on the need to fund their particular projects. Those projects always required expanding the employee base for that group or department, and that added to the cost of the project. Of course, these projects were all cost plus so the plus part, the profit, went directly to company headquarters where it was shared by the CEO, senior executives and shareholders. Whether or not any particular project contributed to the actual defense or actual advance of any bonafide or legitimate interest of the US was irrelevant. What was pertinent was the sales ability of middle management, and their customer was the US military top brass in the Pentagon and Congressmen who had their own little stashes of cash to dole out.
After a few years at GD Convair, it became apparent that there was no real chance of advancement. If I was lucky I could work there till I retired. If not, I would be shuffled around from plant to plant -wherever there was an ongoing contract that could support more workers. As it turned out, it wasn't too many more years until the whole division was shut down. I guess that's when they figured out that the Centaur rocket didn't serve any real purpose. However, I left GD before that happened. I decided to go back to school at UCSD in the Applied Electrophysics Department under a program where I could still remain an employee at GD and supposedly return there after I got my degree. The best part was that I could work summers at GD at my regular salary and that I didn't have to leave San Diego.
UCSD was practically begging for graduate students. They gave me a research assistantship which paid my bills, and the summer job at GD supplemented my income. UCSD didn't even require me to work for my assistantship so it was more like a scholarship. The Applied Electrophysics Department was just getting started, and they needed students so they were out to recruit them.
After my first year at UCSD, I got a summer job with GD in Fort Worth, Texas where they were making F-111s. This division was called General Dynamics Fort Worth appropriately enough. Again it was a pretty boring job, but I did do a pretty interesting make work project involving a method for locating a fault. There's a term for it which escapes me. Anyway nothing probably came of my project, but it kept me occupied. However, I wasn't too happy in Fort Worth. I had wanted to stay and work in San Diego that summer. The Vietnam War was heating up, and I was becoming more politically active and aware.
The next summer I worked at the General Dynamics Electronics Division, which had a huge plant along Pacific Highway. General Dynamics paid no local property taxes on that real estate due to a little deal with the Federal Government in which GD sold or gave the plant to the Federal Government which in turn leased it back to GD. Since the Federal Government doesn't have to pay local property taxes, this is how GD got out of paying them. This cut the rug out from under the local school system which depended heavily on local property taxes. I did a muckraking article on this and other profit enhancing shenanigans GD engaged in for the San Diego Free Press.
After two summer jobs at GD I decided to part ways and ended my employment there. At that point I was heavily involved in student politics at UCSD, writing for the Free Press and protesting the Vietnem War. The extensive plant formerly owned by GD Electronics is still there. Now it's known as SPAWAR. SPAWAR stands for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, a not very accurate acronym, but then guys, believe it or not, get paid to sit around and come up with new acronyms periodically.
From their website:
"Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) is responsible for development of the technology to collect, transmit, process, display and, most critically, manage information essential to successful military operations. The Center develops the capabilities that allow decision-makers of the Navy, and increasingly of the joint services, to carry out their operational missions and protect their forces."
Their website offers a considerable amount of military psychobabble and bullshit intended to snow the observer, but it's obvious that SPAWAR is just a gigantic boondoggle offering middle class social welfare for those willing to get with the program and go along to get along. It's obvious that nothing of any significant value militarily or in any other way will come out of there. The significant programs will be contracted out to Jet Propulsion Lab or Lincoln Lab.
SPAWAR corruption is now surfacing as reported by the San Diego Union:
Six charged with corruption, fraud at SPAWAR
Union-Tribune Staff WriterOriginally published 3:55 p.m. July 7, 2009, updated 9:23 a.m., July 8, 2009
SAN DIEGO – A high-ranking manager of a San Diego-based government research organization, his wife and four other people have been charged in federal indictments with fraud and corruption related to nearly $5 million in contracts awarded since 1999.
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command employees Gary Alexander, 49, and his wife, Kelly Alexander, 46, accepted cash bribes and other items of value from individuals seeking employment as government subcontractors, according to the 25-count indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Two others were charged with paying the bribes, which included thousands of dollars in cash along with things such as a men's Rolex watch.
This is not surprising because the business of so many adjuncts to the MIC is contracting out work. So the fact that profitable games are being played around the contracting out of that work or that defense contractors are bribing congressman like Randy "Duke" Cunningham (now serving a jail sentence) for contracts is not surprising. The fact that so many of these boondoggles are entirely legitimate is not surprising either. Not everyone is tempted to step over the line - only the overly ambitious.
So the Military-Industrial-Complex marches on with variations on the themes I observed when I was a part of it. Cost Plus contracts, layers and layers of middle managers, department heads and others lobbying Congress for contracts, subcontracting galore and proliferating work ad infinitum, the actual work being done by PhDs at some elite laboratories, the majority of workers doing no useful work but simply being contract monitors. This is all done to consume ever increasing amounts of the Federal government's money for the Military Industrial Complex which represents a giant sucking sound of taxpayer money being sucked down the tubes.
I finally became a full time activist with rather tenuous ties to, but ostensibly a member of, the student body at UCSD. Later after receiving a Masters Degree in Information and Computer Science, I would again enter the realm of the MIC but that will be the subject of another blog.
